What are the decrees of God?
The word "decree" points to something God has settled in Himself before time began, and then carries out in history whatever men may do. Scripture speaks of it under several words — purpose, counsel, foreknowledge, decree — and commentators are careful to distinguish them, because confusing them either flattens God's plan into mere fate or dissolves human responsibility altogether.
Purpose, counsel, ways
One writer separates three terms that are often blurred together. Purpose is the goal; counsel is the deliberation of God about how the goal will be reached; the ways of God are that plan unfolding in real events.
George DavisonPurpose is the objective which God has before Him; divine Persons took counsel as to how that was to be secured; and the ways of God are bringing it all into effect. When the ways of God reach finality His counsel will all have been carried into effect, and that which He purposed will have been secured, and it is this which will go into the eternal state.
The same writer notes that Scripture never says "eternal counsel," but does once say "eternal purpose" (Ephesians 3:11).
Nothing outside the plan
If God's counsel is the plan that secures His purpose, then no event in the world falls outside it — including events God plainly does not approve.
An Outline of Sound WordsHow very encouraging it is to the Christian to know that nothing happens in this world but what serves the will of God. God is not acting publicly today in the events of the world, as He surely will in a coming day, but His counsel has ordered that everything must work towards the great end of fulfilling His eternal purpose. In that which God does not rule He overrules, even as He makes the wrath of man to praise Him.
The Son at the centre
God's decisions are not abstract policy. They have a Person as their object, and everything else is arranged around Him.
VariousThose counsels were the eternal counsels of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Thus God purposed in Himself to gather a great and wondrous universe around His Son. As the Apostle says: "that in the fullness of time He might unite all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth, in Him: in whom also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will."
The decree declared
In Psalm 2 the word "decree" appears on the lips of the King Himself, in the face of rulers plotting against Him. (Older translations read "I will declare the decree"; the ESV has "I will tell of the decree.")
Samuel RidoutWhy is it that the King in Zion can stand against all the hatred and opposition of the enemy? Why is it that even in the day of His rejection, when His followers were only a few feeble Jews, shortly after Pentecost they could take up this second psalm and quote it back to God as an argument why He should give them boldness to speak the Word without fear? It was because that King in Zion was His Son.
Man's refusal does not cancel the appointment. Christ was offered to the goodwill of men and met with hatred, and one writer draws the conclusion: "He will be established by the decree of God" (J. N. Darby).
The cross: settled beforehand, still guilty
The clearest case of God's determination and man's guilt meeting in one event is the death of Christ.
Hamilton SmithIt is clear that the wickedness of men was only carrying out the counsels that God had determined before to be done (Acts 2:23; 4:27-28). But that will being accomplished, God will allow no further indignities to be heaped upon His holy Servant, Jesus; though men appointed His grave with the wicked, yet God decreed that He was with the rich in His death.
What God has not decreed
Writers here draw a firm line around the doctrine. God's settled decisions are decisions of love, and one thing is not among them.
C. H. MackintoshIt is not according to the loving heart of God that any of His creatures should perish. There is no such thing set forth in Scripture as any decree of God consigning a certain number of the human race to eternal damnation. Some may be judicially given over to blindness because of deliberate rejection of the light. All who perish will have only themselves to blame. All who reach heaven will have to thank God.
The practical guard
Talk about decrees can be misused to excuse doing nothing. The safeguard is to know which side of the line you stand on.
C. H. MackintoshThere is a certain style of speaking of the counsels, purposes, and decrees of God — of the enactments of His moral government, and of the times and seasons which He has put in His own power — which goes far to sweep away the very foundations of human responsibility. This must be carefully guarded against. We must always bear in mind that man's responsibility rests on what is revealed, not on what is secret.
Another writer puts the same balance in a sentence: "Sovereignty is His matter; responsibility is ours" (A. J. Pollock).
Summary
- Purpose — God fixed a goal before time; "eternal purpose" is the one phrase Scripture uses for it.
- Counsel — the plan by which that goal is secured; God works all things according to it, ruling where He can be seen and overruling where He cannot.
- Christ — the whole plan gathers a universe around the Son; the decree of Psalm 2 sets Him as King despite every plot against Him.
- The cross — men's worst act carried out what God had determined beforehand, and they were still held guilty for it.
- Your part — no decree condemns anyone in advance; all who perish blame themselves, all who are saved thank God, and responsibility rests on what is revealed, not on what is secret.